Alita

by Pat Cadigan

  That late in the day, traffic was slow and the queues at the market were long. Sometimes Hugo would get to the front of one only to find the vendor was out of what he wanted and he had to stand in a different queue and hope for better luck. It was raining by the time he was done and the traffic was worse. Hugo managed to squeeze onto a bus that took twenty minutes to travel a block and a half before it broke down. He waited a while for another, then gave up and walked; even if he’d had money for a cab, he wouldn’t have found one. Taxis in Iron City always disappeared when it rained.

  After a while Hugo realised he kept looking up at Zalem’s shadow in the rain clouds and told himself not to. If someone at the Factory saw him on a surveillance camera, they might wonder what he was looking for up there and get suspicious. They might decide to send a Centurian to his house to ask questions, or even search the place. Then the Centurian would find the flyer and it would be all over, case closed, thank you and good night.

  When he finally did get home, Nana was waiting outside in the rain. The look on her face made him drop the bags and run for the front door, but Nana was too quick for him. She swept him into her arms and held him tight, saying, You can’t go inside, Hugo, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. There was no other way. He’d have taken us down with him.

  Hugo tried not to believe it. But then two men came out the front door carrying a stretcher with a body on it, all covered up. They were joined by a lumbering and hulking Centurian and a Hunter-Warrior with a bounty bag. Hugo tried to tell himself it couldn’t be his brother’s head in the bounty hunter’s bag.

  Even after he and Nana were finally allowed back in the house, Hugo kept calling for his brother. He went up to the attic room and pounded on the locked door, demanding Big Bro let him in. Nana didn’t tell him to stop or be quiet. She waited for him to wear himself out and carried him to bed. While he slept, she scrubbed the room from top to bottom, so there was no trace of his brother left.

  The next day, Nana told Hugo it was just the two of them now. They’d be all right for a while. She wouldn’t have to get a job right away. That was when he realised she’d collected a hefty bounty for Big Bro. Well, the Factory didn’t pay death benefits to the family of a criminal. The fact that Big Bro hadn’t been just some disgruntled slob but a Factory engineer made the offence even worse, although Hugo suspected they’d given Nana something for the emotional pain and suffering of having to turn in her own husband.

  Or maybe not. He’d have taken us down with him, she’d said, holding him while they both cried in the rain. She had been so sure Big Bro would get caught that she decided she might as well go for the money.

  Hugo wasn’t surprised she wanted them to go on being family—he just didn’t understand how she thought it was possible. Originally he planned to give it a month before he left but he found he couldn’t stick it out even for a week. He took some of his brother’s old clothes and some food, and let her keep her blood money.

  His note had been brief: Don’t try to find me. He thought she might anyway, but maybe she’d known better, because he never saw her again. Some years later he sneaked back to the old neighbourhood to see what had become of her and found a different family living in the house. He considered asking the neighbours, but he didn’t recognise them either and decided he really didn’t need to know if she were happy or miserable or dead.

  Case closed, you know the rest. Thank you and good night.

  * * *

  “You think maybe he’s deaf as well as dumb?”

  Hugo looked up from the bracelet to see that he was surrounded by six guys, while a seventh moved in to lean casually on the gyro’s handlebars. They were all a few years older than he was, several inches taller and a good deal heavier. The guy leaning on the gyro wasn’t the biggest but his arms were all hard muscle, the kind that promised to hurt you real bad if you weren’t careful; if he noticed you were alive, you hadn’t been careful.

  Hugo most definitely hadn’t been careful, in a way that was downright embarrassing. Every part of Iron City was somebody’s turf. You could get away with just passing through but Hugo was trespassing, an offence compounded by his being so wrapped up in his own thoughts, he hadn’t even noticed when the crew had come up around him to tell him to get lost.

  “We can tell you’re not from around here,” the guy leaning on the handlebars said. “Otherwise you’d know it belongs to us. This exact spot where you are right now? It’s a no-parking zone, especially for a piece-of-shit gyro like yours. It’s ruining the scenic beauty of our trash pile.”

  The guy straightened up and swiped the bracelet out of Hugo’s fingers. “This ought to cover part of the fine. My guys’ll collect the rest.” He stepped back and someone kicked the gyro over.

  Hugo had never been much of a fighter, surviving more by his wits than his fists. He’d learned how to talk his way out of trouble and if that didn’t work, he went to plan B—i.e., running away real fast. Being in a fight hurt, even when you were winning. You might get the upper hand, but you might also break it. A broken hand was a serious disadvantage when your opponent and/or their friends came looking for payback.

  Unfortunately, sometimes you couldn’t talk, run or punch; the fourth and least desirable alternative was curling up on the ground and trying to protect your softer parts while hoping your attackers didn’t get so caught up in what they were doing that they forgot to stop.

  The beat-down seemed to go on for hours before the leader finally called them off. But of course, someone had to give Hugo a parting shot, one last kick in the kidneys. He was going to pee blood for a day or two.

  “I think this punk’s learned his lesson about no-parking zones and going where he ain’t wanted,” the leader said. “Prob’ly won’t take him but five minutes to pull himself together and ride this piece-of-shit home to Mommy. And I’m sure he knows we’ll come back in five minutes just to make sure.” The guy laughed. “Hey, you have a nice night, loser, okay? And thanks for the bracelet. It doesn’t go with your outfit.”

  They were all laughing as they walked off.

  Hugo waited till he couldn’t hear them any more before he pushed himself to a sitting position. An intense sharp pain on both sides of his ribcage made him catch his breath. He felt around gingerly, careful not to press too hard. Doc Ido had told him once that bruised ribs hurt worse than broken ones. Unless you had a broken one poking your liver or spleen. Which side were those on? Was the pain different when you speared an organ?

  He took a slow, deep breath, which also hurt, then managed to get the gyro upright. That hurt a lot too, and so did pulling himself to his feet. There was a cut on his head bleeding copiously; the doc said cuts above the neck bled a lot because of all the capillaries, but unless you were a haemophiliac, you weren’t in danger of bleeding to death.

  It was painful to swing one leg over the gyro, and painful to sit on the seat. But the good news was, everything would hurt a lot worse tomorrow. Hugo caught sight of himself in the gyro’s side mirror and flinched—one eye was swelling shut and his split lower lip was the size of a hot dog. He felt a sudden, intense surge of anger. What he really wanted to do instead of limping off home was find those guys and run them all down, put a tyre track across all their faces.

  Oh, yeah—you and what army of Centurians? he asked his reflection silently.

  He started the gyro; the bastards hadn’t done something to it that would end up killing him. No, they just wanted to show how tough they were, not commit murder. Besides, it wasn’t like he’d actually done anything. He hadn’t stolen from them—

  No, you stole from someone else, some poor innocent lady who had nothing to do with your family. Stealing from someone with no cyborg parts was crossing the line. You only got what was coming to you.

  Hugo sighed heavily, ignoring the pain it caused. As if life was all educational moments and learning lessons. This was just another day in Iron City, where the strong preyed on the weak and you did whatever you had to do to survive.
Like Nana had. Big Bro would never have got away with sending a flyer up to Zalem, and she’d been the only person in the house smart enough to know it. When she couldn’t talk him out of it, she’d done the only thing she could to save herself and Hugo. Just because you loved someone didn’t mean you had to let them get you killed.

  He rode slowly down a side street, wincing at every bump until he found the main road. The ride would be smoother, if much slower—the traffic was as heavy now as it had been that day when he’d come back from the market to find Nana outside in the rain—and he wasn’t up to his usual swerving between cars and trucks.

  So today had been a bad day—actually, a pretty terrible one, worse than most. He had to remember never to let anyone get close enough to hurt him. Also, to pay more attention to what was going on around him.

  CHAPTER 3

  “Stop right there,” said the elegantly dressed, dark-skinned man in the back seat of the limo. His name was Vector and it was his limo. Admission was strictly limited to those people he considered worthy enough to breathe his climate-controlled air.

  An observer might have wondered about the man sitting next to him. Gamot didn’t look like he belonged in a limo. He was, however, one of Vector’s most valued employees, although his employment was informal, which was to say, off the books. It was one of the reasons Vector chose to meet with him in the limo. With his lank, greying hair, his puffy face rough with old acne scars, his ragged clothes and dirty feet in flip flops, Gamot belonged in Vector’s office even less.

  “What is it, boss?” asked Gamot, politely puzzled. For all that he looked like a beggar, his manners (with his boss at least) were impeccable.

  “I thought I just heard you say the word ‘late’,” Vector said, with the kind of serious expression he knew none of his employees wanted to see on his face. “As in, ‘Hugo and his crew are going to be late delivering’. Is that what I heard?”

  “Yeah, sorry,” Gamot replied, looking apologetic. “The kid took a bad beating.”

  “Hugo, you mean?”

  Gamot’s apologetic expression intensified. “Yeah. See, a few nights back, he was out in south-town—”

  “What the hell for?” Vector said, annoyed. “I never sent him there. There’s nothing in southie except white punks on dope.”

  “Dunno, boss, I guess he was just there,” Gamot said. “He was near the trash pile so he coulda been pickin’ around and took a wrong turn. Anyway, he got beat up pretty bad. Cracked ribs, a concussion, one eye swole shut—it was seven against one, and he didn’t have a chance. That’s how they do in south-town. I saw him the day after. Kid’s lucky he didn’t end up in a coma.”

  “Was he in the hospital?” Vector asked stiffly.

  “Well, no. He just went to Doc Ido. The doc fixed him up, even though he isn’t a—”

  Vector made a short impatient gesture with one hand. “If he wasn’t in the hospital, then he wasn’t hurt that badly.”

  “The doc told him he shoulda gone to the hospital—”

  “But he didn’t and he’s still alive anyway, isn’t he?” Vector paused and Gamot nodded. “Well, then, there’s no good reason for him to be late. That’s no way to do business.”

  “Sorry, boss,” Gamot said, looking glum. “I dunno what to tell you.”

  “You’re not the one that owes me an apology.” Vector took a breath. He had a tremendous urge to backhand Gamot, then have the driver pull away and when they got up over thirty miles an hour, open the door and push him out. But Gamot would probably take it the wrong way, not understanding he wasn’t who Vector wanted to punish. It was better if the street staff didn’t know Vector considered them interchangeable; they all knew too much, even if most of them had no idea they knew anything.

  Also, Gamot was good at what he did. It was bad form to kill the messenger unless he was incompetent.

  Still, this was really disturbing. Hugo had never failed him before, never turned up late, or short or with a load of crap that he tried to pass off as the good stuff.

  “When was this famous beat-down?” Vector asked Gamot after a bit.

  “Four, five days ago, something like that.”

  “Then he’s over the worst,” Vector said briskly. “Kids heal fast. They have to. Find him and bring him here. He and I need to have a conversation.”

  “You got it, boss.” Gamot made to open the car door.

  “Not so fast,” Vector said. “There’s something else I want you to do.”

  “Anything,” Gamot promised. His sincerity was all but palpable.

  “Before you pick up Hugo, swing by the market and look for a vendor called Mario. Tell him I sent you to get a pair of shoes for yourself. I don’t care what they look like, what colour or style, as long as they’re closed. Make it fast and be wearing them when you get back with Hugo, and from now on.” Vector shifted a little and sat forward. “Got it?”

  “Got it, boss.” Gamot was obviously trying not to look at his own feet. He looked at Vector’s instead.

  “They don’t have to be like mine,” Vector told him. That would have been impossible, anyway. Vector had swapped them out of a shipment for Zalem, sending a pair of lop-sided Iron City brogues in their place. Zalem hadn’t queried the substitution. Maybe they thought it was some kind of street chic; people up there were probably as stupid as anyone else.

  “I’m on it, boss,” Gamot said. “Shoes, then Hugo, and shoes from now on.”

  “I want you well-shod, not shoddy,” Vector said.

  To his surprise, Gamot got the joke. “Good one, boss,” he said. “You want anything else? Late lunch? Churros?”

  “Just make sure you leave at least one runner in shouting distance of the limo. But not leaning on it or sitting on the bumper.”

  “I’m on the case,” Gamot assured him. “I mean, cases.”

  He got out of the car and a blast of hot, damp air hit Vector squarely in the face. He told the driver to turn up the a/c and the dehumidifier before he drowned. The driver obeyed without so much as a Yes, boss, which was how Vector liked his drivers—alert, obedient and silent.

  There was no telling how long he would have to wait for Gamot to come back with Hugo but that was all right. He could use the time to think about the number one item on his to-do list: his brilliant, hot and now single Tuner.

  Vector took out his tablet and looked at some video taken in the pits during the last game. This woman was going to build him champions bigger and better than Grewishka had been even at his peak—in fact, people would forget they’d ever heard of that burn-out. And now that she’d split from Dyson Ido, the genius lady was all his. She was kind of a cold fish though, which had nothing to do with the end of her marriage. She had always been chilly, an iceberg sailing through the world, never melting, offering only bright, shining brilliance… and frostbite. The blue in her eyes was the arctic, not the sky; Vector had seen her freeze Paladins where they stood just by glaring at them.

  Truth to tell, Vector had wanted both her and Ido on a full-time, exclusive contract, but Ido wouldn’t go for it. When Chiren left him, Ido quit Motorball altogether—a damned shame for the players who’d come to depend on his superior skills. Anyone who wanted to see him now had to go to his shabby little clinic and wait with the saddest of the sad and the most wretched of the refuse.

  Vector thought it was actually a shitty thing to do, especially for a sanctimonious pendejo who wanted everyone to think he was on the side of the angels. But there was no forcing someone to work in the Motorball pits. As with most things, bribery worked best—but not with the virtuous Dyson Ido. Someday Vector wanted to ask His Holiness what was so noble about turning his back on people after letting them believe he would always be there for them. How did that work?

  But he’d probably never have the chance. Dr Self-Righteous wouldn’t have anything to do with him, which was fine with Vector. If he could only have one, he’d take Chiren. The Ice Queen was a lot better-looking than Ido, with her long dark ha
ir and perfect skin and slender, lithe body, and that pretty little purple gem in the middle of her forehead. Vector only wished she were a bit shorter—it was easier to dominate someone when you had at least four inches on them, and genius lady was almost as tall as he was. But it was her height that made her look so good in designer clothes. It was like she had been made to wear them… and then drop them on his bedroom floor. After that, she’d be looking up at him.

  All told, it was better to have her inside the tent pissing out, rather than outside the tent pissing in with Ido. Without Chiren it didn’t matter where Ido stood when he pissed. He probably didn’t even have as much water pressure as his ex.

  Vector permitted himself a chuckle at that one and poured himself two fingers of excellent Zalem-only whisky from the bar, just to do something other than watch the losers of Iron City walk past the limo and whisper to each other about it. Most of them would know who it belonged to, and they showed their respect by giving a little ground as they went by so they didn’t stumble and scratch it by accident.

  They also looked properly respectful, even awed, which Vector definitely approved of even if it didn’t make him like them any better, or at all. It was only right that they understood he was at the top of the food chain and they were below him. While it wouldn’t get them invited to his penthouse for drinks or dinner, it wouldn’t shorten their lives either.

  He had finished the whisky and was about to pour another when Gamot rapped on the window. Vector pressed a button in the console to open the door. Hugo tumbled in and landed on the floor at Vector’s feet, looking very much the worse for wear.

  “Thank you, Gamot,” Vector said. “How are the shoes?”

  Gamot lifted one foot; grey hiking boots. Heavy-duty. Mario must have had the same reaction to Gamot’s feet. “They feel kinda strange,” he told Vector.